The goat has gone!

kwkw727 — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 09:16:28 +0000

This week marked the closing of a chapter. After 14 years of life in the UK I left for somewhere altogether different Somewhere warmer. Somewhere closer to home without being home. When I say I closed a chapter, it’s probably more like I closed the book and returned it to the library. That book started with one suitcase and finished with 64 boxes. It started out with a single 26 year old and one Lonely Planet Guide to Western Europe and finished with a divorced 39 year old and a bag of guides to living in Singapore. It started with a political adviser and ended with a 9-5 banker and a 5-9 photographer. It started with three friends and ended with countless. So here I am in Singapore. My eyeballs are sweating from the humidity and it’s stinging my eyes. I have been whisked around the city and ushered in and out of 8 apartments at various heights - each with 25 metre pools and one of those had a gym in the shallow end – yes – exercise bikes and weight machines in the water. People say yes. Computer never says no. So different. In more ways than that of course. The melting pot of London society is now a more homogenous one where I am the ethnic minority. In order to settle myself in I have had a little wander about. I have been here countless times of course but visiting is not living and so I am looking for the things that make me happy, or at least the things that made me happy in my old life. I have found a glimmer of Arabic culture. I found Arab Street in Kampong Glam, but of course the Arabs left long ago and now it’s mostly Malay. I found two Lebanses restaurants. I found a bellydance troupe who I will go and see tomorrow. But really I am here for new things. Like sunburn and humidity, green jungles on the median strips, monkeys in the park and pools with gyms in them! Not at all like London. And of course I am not at all like Singapore. I already have had it pointed out to me by a random, hunched over Chinese fellow (looking a bit, and probably as tall as Yoda) that I am “so tall.” Won’t be blending in here then!

On Monday I start my job. However on Monday I will also fly to Australia. In just over one week I have been in the Arabian peninsula, the UK, Asia and Australia. What day is it again? Where am I? And whose bed is this I am in?

Goats in Trees Blog

The goat has gone!